Kara Tointon and Keith Allen shine in an otherwise flickering production of pseudo-Victorian psychological thriller Gaslight

New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham Touring Until March 11th 2hrs 20mins

Rating:

Patrick Hamilton intended Gaslight, which he wrote in 1938, to be ‘a pastiche of Wilkie Collins’, a pseudo-Victorian thriller. But it’s better than that. It’s a psychologically astute portrait of an ugly, abusive marriage.

Indeed, there are echoes of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House when the controlling husband, Jack, calls Bella a ‘good child’, tells her how to treat the servants and humiliates her horribly by flirting with the pretty maid, Nancy, whose blooming complexion does indeed make poor Bella look pallid, pasty and strained by comparison.

Kara Tointon, above, shines as Bella, a wife trapped and manipulated by her husband Jack, played by Rupert Young, until she fears that she is going insane

Rupert Young’s Jack towers above little Bella, scooping her up in his arms and putting her on the ­settee, as physically overbearing as he is mentally, feeding her spoonfuls of calming ‘medicine’.

IT'S A FACT

The 1944 film version of Gaslight featured Angela Lansbury in her screen debut as the Cockney maid. Ingrid Bergman starred as Bella

She is thrilled out of all proportion when he says he will reward her for being ‘very good lately’ with an outing to the theatre. She never gets there. A photograph has, once again, mysteriously ­disappeared from the grimy, murky sitting room. He accuses her of moving it. Worse, he says that she is going off her head.

Young plays Jack as a typical public-school sadist, who intimidates while always saying ‘please’. But he could be more coldly menacing and malign.

Young (above, with Kara Tointon as Bella) plays Jack as a typical public-school sadist, who intimidates while always saying ‘please’. But he could be more coldly menacing and malign

A pitiful Kara Tointon eloquently suggests Bella’s mounting confusion. She thinks she hears footsteps from the floor above that she is forbidden to enter, and the gaslight dips in the room when her husband says he is at his club or entertaining ‘unemployed actresses’.

She fears that she really might be losing her mind, just as her mother did.

Keith Allen brings a playful, impish quality to his warm, whiskery, whisky-dispensing Detective Rough, who appears from nowhere like a guardian angel. In a lovely moment, he asks Bella if he can take off his coat and display what he calls his ‘saucy shirt’.

Keith Allen brings a playful, impish quality to his warm, whiskery, whisky-dispensing Detective Rough, who appears from nowhere like a guardian angel

Anthony Banks’s production burns with a fitful flame, flickering eerily but also occasionally spluttering drearily.

On this production’s tour, the smaller theatres rather than the cavernous, 1,300-seat New Alexandra will cast darker, more threatening shadows.

Teenage Tamsin tenderly looks after her withdrawn, dysfunctional younger brother Dean, who wastes days in the shower room, slathering gel on his hair, one of his many obsessive-compulsive rituals, like the manic tapping with each hand. He sat on them during his recent social services assessment and was judged fit for work, even though he can’t leave the house.

At the other end of the stage is the Amazon-style warehouse where Tamsin works, packing stuff ordered online.

It’s not just the mindless work that is soul-destroying but the dehumanising conditions: sore feet, sorer cardboard-cut hands, a zero-hours contract and constant monitoring – toilet-breaks are timed. Presumably she is cheaper than a robot.

Were it not for the sweetness of co-worker Luke and her love of Meat Loaf, both more convenient than credible, Tamsin’s predicament would be unbearable.

As would this play, for which Katherine Soper won the Bruntwood Prize, as much I suspect for drawing attention to an invisible underclass as for her as yet too naturalistic though accomplished writing. She offers no solutions. Endurance is all.

There’s something disturbingly voyeuristic about watching Matthew Xia’s bleak, superbly performed production from a comfortable theatre seat in London’s Sloane Square. Which may well be the point.

Promises Promises

Southwark Playhouse, London Until Feb 18th 3hrs

Rating:

Very few promises are delivered in composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David’s dispiriting, joyless musicalisation of the much-loved 1960 Billy Wilder movie The Apartment.

Wilder’s film starred Jack Lemmon as Chuck, the unassertive employee who is promised career advancement by his bosses in exchange for lending them his bed for their extramarital dalliances. Apart from the wonderful I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, the bland, muzaky score never lifts off.

But then Neil Simon’s storytelling doesn’t exactly put a spring in one’s step. Even the most unreconstructed caveman would be shamed by the crude emotional impulse behind Where Can You Take A Girl?, sung by four panting, randy, flabby, revolting execs: ‘All we need is one place/For 60 minutes or 40 minutes, more or less/Oh, there must be some place/In 20 minutes, we’ll find happiness/We can be fast.’

OK, so this is the Sixties, but must every male boss have the morals of an alley cat and every secretary be a mincing dolly-bird doormat as they are in Bronagh Logan’s production?

Gabriel Vick’s sweet Chuck stands out among the stinkers around him, in particular Paul Robinson’s loathsome lizard Mr Sheldrake. Daisy Maywood shines as Fran, the girl he adores. But one’s patience with the show’s witless take on political incorrectness is exhausted long before Chuck grows a much-needed spine.